of these people” They can’t play, they can’t sing, so the only optoin is to become a fierce critic”.Re: Maihar, Amjad and Shahjahanpur styles, each has some great features worth learning and adopting. With Ud Ali Akbar Khan, it was his mind boggling ability to conjure up a completely new angle to a raga – sheer bliss !. He also was the first person to play the sarod with clear sound (along with Pt RMM) in the alaap with much more emphasis on emotion. This was a revolution from the “dara diri” bashing crowd of yesteryears. Ud Amjad Ali extended the clear sound to all parts of the performance – rather than disintegrate into the “clackety clack” style of the gat, as well as polished the ekhara style of playing, importing Ud Vilayat Khan and Ud Amir Khan’s repertoire. New style of compositions were used, simplicity was preferred over complex dara diri (at least for a while). There is also a lot of extremely good material in the Shahjahanpur style – sort of the middle of both styles. They do not shy away from the upper octave (the bane of every sarodiya’s existence), so in terms of compositional maturity, they have great depth and diversity.And the gharanas are learning from each other. I notice Maihar-ites playing crystal clear gats these days (Alam Khan) and others like Pt. Tejendra NM producing divine music combining the Maihar emphasis on emotion and the Shahjahanpur/Amjad style of gayaki interpretation. The Shahjahanpur-ites are adopting Ud Amjad Ali’s style of clarity, which goes with their wonderful material (e.g Pratyush) – some very good material there. That’s exactly how a craft is honed and progress made – learn from each other and build on the past. Each of the other gharanas has absorbed a vital lesson from Ud Amjad Ali- you need to play clear, pure sound – working yourself into a frenzy doing dara-diri doesn’t count for much if the sound is compromised. This is Ustadji’s legacy of the sarod – an entire generation of sarodiyas now focus on sound quality.Little people on the sidelines criticising maestros past or present do nothing for the music. While we do not have a pioneer of the calibre of Ud Ali Akbar, Ud Amjad Ali or Pt BDG, the younger performers are full of promise and will mature over time. As they bring more material to an improved style of sound delivery, we’ll have a much better repertoire. One can only hope for the kind of transition which has taken place in sitar (Ud Shahid Parvez et all) to happen in the sarod. I remain hopeful.